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player ready...John Turturro said he channeled Billy Martin with such ardor that after one disagreement on the set he challenged an assistant director to a fight in the parking lot.
That director soon quit the project, leaving Turturro wondering whether this acting gig had turned into too much of a seance.
“Billy’s not around, and I didn’t have the chance to talk to him, to have him defend himself,” Turturro said Wednesday of Martin at a preview for “The Bronx is Burning,” ESPN’s upcoming summer miniseries.
“I took that seriously,” Turturro said. “He was someone I had an innate sympathy for when I was a young boy.”
The very good news is that the sports network, which can be a sloppy, multiheaded dilettante, has approached this project seriously, apparently producing a viable, dramatic series directed by Jeremiah Chechik. There is money on the screen, for sure, with Turturro in the lead, warring with another heavyweight actor, Oliver Platt, as George Steinbrenner. Much of the action was filmed at a minor-league ballpark in Norwich, Conn., but special effects transform the place into body doubles for Yankee Stadium and Fenway Park.
Historic footage from that precious, edgy era is interspersed with the new material. The actors were coached for weeks on their baseball skills, and efforts were made to re-create every detail of the time — from right-handed batting glove, to left-field billboard. There is also some unnecessary silliness in a cameo by Jason Giambi as a cab driver. Prepare to cringe.
Another concern, at least judging by the preview clips: Reggie Jackson, the third piece of the famous Bronx triumvirate, is portrayed by Daniel Sunjata as a bit of a strutting caricature. Reggie was always a conceited braggart, sure. But there was also a nobility to the man and his remarkable feats. Maybe that comes through as the narrative progresses.
The eight-part series begins airing July 6, and will focus more on the Yankees than on the other events of 1977 so tidily incorporated into Jonathan Mahler’s book of the same title — the hunt for killer Son of Sam, the traumatic blackout and the mayoral race between Ed Koch and Mario Cuomo.
This seemed to concern Jimmy Breslin, the former Daily News columnist and a Pulitzer Prize winner, who said that he was more focused back then with reporting on Son of Sam than on the Bombers.
“The Yankees never shot anybody,” Breslin said.
Instead of mass murder, Turturro’s desperate Martin must carry the day on screen. Martin so desperately desired this job of Yankees manager, he was always a vulnerable target for the manipulative Steinbrenner. Any writer who covered Martin — including this one — came to understand that Billy was as self-destructive, even pathetic, as he was dedicated to chasing championships.
When Turturro took on the role, he fretted that he was too tall and too big. He went on a diet, read some old newspaper clips, learned to slump his shoulders, and stuck on some rather large plastic ears.
The result is a remarkable knock-off of the volatile little manager. Pepe said he did a double take when he walked up behind Turturro in full uniform and floppy ears, thinking this must be the real thing.
And The Boss? Well, he may not be as spry or blustery. But Steinbrenner is still out there, somewhere, still demanding titles and fronting the greatest circus on Earth.